418 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniakigallu, or platform, of the original temple, the sides, and not
the corners of which faced the four cardinal points, and which
possessed four gates, each in the centre of a side. In it was the
ziggurat,“the house of the foundation of heaven and earth,”as it
[455] was termed, with its seven stages, which rose one above the other
in gradually diminishing proportions to a height of 300 feet.^348 A
winding ramp led upwards on the outside, connecting the stages
with each other, and allowing a chariot to be driven along it to
the top. Here in the last of the seven stages was the chamber of
the god. It contained no image of the deity, only a couch of gold
and a golden table for the shewbread.^349 None but a woman into
whom the god had breathed the spirit of prophecy was allowed to
enter it, and it was to her that Bel revealed himself at night on his
golden couch and delivered his oracles. As in Greece, so too in
Babylonia and Assyria, women were inspired prophetesses of the
gods. It was from the priestesses and serving-women of Istar of
Arbela that Esar-haddon received the oracles of the goddess; and
we are reminded that in Israel also it was the prophetess Deborah
who roused her countrymen to battle, and Huldah, rather than
Jeremiah, to whom the high priest betook himself that he might
hear“the word of the Lord.”
It is significant that the place of the oracle was the topmost
chamber of the tower. The god is conceived as coming down
from heaven;^350 it is there that he lives, not in the underground
recesses of the mountain of the world or fathomless abysses of
(^348) The first stage was 300 feet square and 110 feet high, while the topmost
was 80 feet long by 70 broad and 50 high.
(^349) For the shewbread, see Zimmern,Beiträge zur Kenntniss der babylonischen
Religion, pp. 94, 95; and Haupt,“Babylonian Elements in the Levitic Ritual,”
p. 59 (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1900). Sometimes six dozen cakes were
laid before the god, sometimes three dozen, more often only one dozen, as
among the Israelites. The shewbread is calledakal pani, which is the exact
equivalent of the Hebrewlekhem happânîm; and Professor Haupt has pointed
out that it was required to be unleavened (mutqu).
(^350) Cp. Gen. xi. 5.